Tired of making lunch on your own? Not really the home-baker you thought you’d be? Why not pick up one of Chef Verena Schulman’s fried fish sandwiches and Chef Roger Elkhouri’s famous cinnamon rolls for lunch tomorrow?
These are just two of the Rice Dining favorites now available at lunch Monday through Friday thanks to Curbside at the Club.
By popular demand, while the Rice serveries remain closed to the public during the coronavirus pandemic, the Faculty Club at Cohen House has started offering lunch service to go.
Just order online, specify a pick-up time, then drive up to the entrance. A Cohen House staff member will bring your food out to your car in containers sealed with red TamperSafe stickers. Utensils and condiments are included.
Not a Cohen House member? You can pay with cash, debit or credit when you pick up your order. You can even walk inside to get your lunch or bike up for service. The Rice Dining team just wants to make grabbing lunch as simple and safe as possible.
It’s a model that is now being explored by other universities. Rice remains a leader in the campus dining world by showing the kind of creativity that generates ideas such as Curbside at the Club, plant-based “barbecue” and family-style meals for homesick students. The continually high Princeton Review rankings provide further evidence of the team’s commitment to high-quality campus dining.
“We’re going to do everything humanly possible to make it a good experience,” said Johnny Curet, director of campus dining, who was inducted into the prestigious Academy of Chefs last year.
In the kitchens, Curet said they’ve established rotating teams of chefs, provided masks for all employees and instituted six feet of social distancing between cooks on the line. They’re also experimenting with new menu ideas and developing to-go options for the summer and fall.
Online offerings include a slew of servery favorites: tacos and protein bowls from 4.Tac0, Schulman’s daily specials (look for carved brisket and cornbread on Mondays and Wednesdays), Elkhouri’s daily specials such as pork pot stickers and a selection of burgers, sandwiches, soups and salads from Cohen House — even its famous Friday seafood gumbo.
And soon, Curet said, they’ll expand into dinner service to go, complete with wine pairings available for pickup in the same covered driveway outside Cohen House.
But for now, he’s happy Rice Dining is serving daily lunches — as well as a sense of community.
“I ran into one of our everyday regular professors at the club last week and he was carrying out some gumbo, and he said, ‘Oh, it's been so long since I've got my gumbo!’” Curet said.
“That makes you happy, to know that people do appreciate it,” he said.
For more information and updates on Curbside at the Club visit dining.rice.edu/curbside or follow Rice Dining on Twitter.